This invention relates to a socket for mounting an electronic part, mainly such as a camera module, on a printed wiring board.
Generally, an electronic device, such as a cellular phone, has a printed wiring board provided therein, and an electronic part such as a camera module is mounted on the printed wiring board. The electronic part, having a low degree of heat tolerance, can not be directly mounted on the board by soldering, and therefore is connected to the printed wiring board, using an electronic part-mounting socket as shown in FIG. 14.
This electronic part-mounting socket 1 is constituted by a socket housing 3 having an electronic part-receiving portion 2 formed by a peripheral wall extending upwardly from four sides of a square bottom plate, and a plurality of contacts 5 each having a resilient contact piece portion 5a which projects from the bottom plate so as to be resiliently contacted with a corresponding terminal portion of the electronic part such as a camera module and a semiconductor device. When the electronic part 4, such as a camera module and a semiconductor device, is held within the electronic part-receiving portion 2, the terminal portions of the electronic part 4 contact the resilient contact piece portions 5a of the contacts 5, respectively, so that the electronic part is electrically connected to the printed wiring board 6 via the contacts 5.
The contact 5 includes a flat plate-like fixing piece portion 5b, a terminal piece portion 5c bent at one end of the fixing piece portion 5b, an intermediate spring piece portion 5d which is bent at the other end of the fixing piece portion 5b remote from the terminal piece portion 5c, and assumes, together with the fixing piece portion 5b, an inverted U-shape, and the resilient contact piece portion 5a which is bent at that end of the intermediate spring piece portion 5d remote from the fixing piece portion 5b to extend in a slanting direction, and can be resiliently deformed through the intermediate spring piece portion 5d. The contacts 5 are inserted into the socket housing from the lower side of this socket housing.
In the above related technique, however, the resiliently-deformable portions of the contacts are located at the side portions of the socket, and therefore spaces for allowing the deformation of the contacts must be secured in the side walls of the socket housing. Therefore, the outer size increased, and this prevented the achievement of a compact design.
It may be proposed to provide a structure in which the contacts are inserted into the socket housing from the side portions of this socket housing in order to locate the resiliently-deformable portions of the contacts in the bottom portion of the socket. In such a structure, there was encountered a problem that the shape of the socket housing became complicated, and therefore the cost for a mold increased, and also the production cost increased.